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I bought two 4 frame nucs of bees on Sunday and put them into brood chamber with foundation. I know that to stimulate cell building, I need to feed them. Well, I gave them a 1.5:1 ratio of sugar to water (I ran out of sugar) in an boardman entrance feeder (they paid no attention to it). I spilled a little on the bottom board at the entrance and they cleaned it up, but they wouldn't visit the bottle. I then put the feeder bottle over the hole in the inner cover and put another brood box and the outer cover over that, but they still don't take it.

I have never had this happen before. Is there just too much nectar out there available that they would rather have or what? I know it has only been two days, but I expected them to start taking syrup right away!

I have seen bees ignore syrup or even honey if there is enough of a nectar flow and they are preoccupied with it. If they don't want it, I wouldn't worry about it, but I'd probably leave it on the inner cover. They might get interested later.

It's true that flavoring (scenting it?) with honey will improve their acceptance of it, but then I figure they don't need it if they won't take it as is. Honey Bee Healthy seems to add alot to their interest in the syrup also. Generally if it's not for stimulating brood, I feed honey and they usually will take that, but sometimes they even ignore the honey.

From what I understand, they will stop taking sugar water once there is a good nectar flow and at that point, it is time to hault feeding. But right now the flow is on and they still took the last batch of sugar water. I stopped feeding anyway. Should I continue to feed even if the flow is in full swing?